In the Company of
by cyan96
Summary: Naruto grows up scorned and ignored but not entirely alone, and is consequently determined to make friends with the eight other occupants of the mindscape he shares. The rest of the Jinchuriki are not quite as enthusiastic about this plan. Naruto, however, is very good at talking people into submission. And with access to the back of their minds, there's really no escape.
1. White Room

**Disclaimer** : I do not own the Naruto franchise and make no money from this piece of writing.

 **Warnings:** Canon-AU, GEN, Jinchuriki-centric, Language, some artistic liberties with backstories

 **Summary:** Uzumaki Naruto seems to bring people together by sheer, tenacious force of personality if nothing else. He grows up scorned and ignored but not entirely alone, and is consequentially determined to make friends with the eight other occupants whose mindscapes he shares.

For their part, the rest of the Jinchuriki are not quite as enthusiastic about this plan. Naruto, however, is very good at talking people into submission. And with access to the back of their minds, there's really no escape.

* * *

Chapter One: White Room

* * *

Most of the time, Naruto lands in the White Room.

The place is not quite a room as it is a space, really. There are no walls, no ceiling, just a stretching blankness that goes on and on and on. There is a center. Or, at least, what had been duly christened the center by the first generation of Jinchuriki, solely for the fact that it's the only landmark within the entire area. Sprawled across the floor, the seal is a craft of crisp lines and stark contrast, red on black on white pentagrams snaking outwards, and it would have been beautiful had it not been such a vicious reminder.

Naruto likes the Room. It's always warm inside, always clean. When he looks down he's usually wearing his favourite clothes, which had been puzzling at first, because he knows that this pair of shorts should have been long disposed of and that T-shirt is scraped and muddied and carrying a hole near his shoulder in real life, but now that he's sort of figured out, sort of been explained the exact mechanics of the Room, it's just cool.

Naruto likes the Room because there are no darting, suspicious eyes, no foul words muttered beneath a curled mouth. He has his own space, of course, but it's smelly and dank and a sewer of all places, which he finds patently unfair. He is grudgingly familiar with it, if only because there had been times he had gotten curious and subconsequently gotten lost in the labyrinth of dripping water and empty pipes, wandering through the dark corridors until he managed to backtrack his way to the exit.

The others call the sewer his mindscape. Naruto is under the impression that his mindscape should be a more awesome place. This is probably the giant fox's fault, he's half sure. Only half, because Naruto tries to avoid the fox as much as possible.

The others don't like the White Room as much as Naruto does. Well, Gaara likes it, and so does Fuu but they are his age and also Naruto's _best-best-best_ friends in all the world. The other ones, the older ones, don't come in as often. Not that it matters-Naruto can hear them always, the whisper of thoughts and emotion, of _voice_ pulsating outwards from individual mindscapes, seeping into the blankness of the Room and being amplified and ricocheted into all nine connected minds.

The White Room is a constant, a familiarity, a companion that Naruto knows will always exist no matter where or how or when. As steady as the sun rising in the early morning gloom.

And then, before that. Or maybe not before. Maybe at the same time, maybe after. But that far back the cabinet of his memories is a muddled amalgamation of images, there is the dungeon and the Fox. Livid red energy. Orange tails. So much anger and hate and bitterness Naruto wants to scream with it. The fox is trapped, behind bars as wide as Naruto is tall,and when it talks the words grate iron filings into his ears.

Another perk of the White Room: Naruto is safe there. Naruto isn't exactly sure he's safe in the sewer, where the fox is a constant, boiling presence of toxic rage.

So, there is the White Room, and there is the Fox. However, before even that, there are the voices.

* * *

For the first few months of his life, Naruto's mind is more or less his own.

There's the fox, of course, but Kurama is sunk deep into his conscious, raging against a cage that holds fast no matter how he trashes. Naruto's infant body sifts through the foreign chakra. This new container is young and malleable, gifted with the bloodline of the ancient Sage himself. It twists Kurama's anger, modifies and integrates the poisonous energy into something less, something purer, something that the body's system can convert into fuel instead of venom.

For four months, the back of Naruto's mind is a cacophony of mundane sounds. Footsteps across chipped tile. The screech of a creaking hinge as a door eases open. Trepidation of a woman's voice, jittery and nervous. Plaster trickling down softly in an out-of-the-way orphanage room.

For four months, the surface of Naruto's mind is blanketed in soft silence. Four months, before the Fox's chakra seeps deep into his system, so intertwined it is that each breath Naruto takes pulses with it, that it would be crippling to the host should his tailed-beast be separated.

Four months. Kurama grumbles and seethes, once again chained to a human soul and infant body.

And then a door is formed.

The door is less an actual door and more a symbolic representation of one. Although, in the depths of the human mind, so close that one leaves the outer conscious and plunges into the inner soul, the line between reality and the metamorphic is allusive at best and nonexistent at worst. Naruto creates the door only in the vaguest sense. His infant brain is only starting to develop, firing synapses and connecting neurons and creating new highways for information. At his age, he has neither recollection nor the necessary spatial capacity to know what a door is.

The fox helps. Unwillingly, as it was for his previous two hosts. It gives access to a place where only the tailed-beasts should allowed through its presence alone. He does not know of the door's location, or of its appearance. Just that _it is_ , that it exists, as sure as the link that connects him and his siblings, an anchor and a chain and a bittersweet memory at once.

Cherry wood. Silvery, newly oiled hinges. The door is painted a pale, shimmering blue like the gentle waters of Uzushio's white sand beaches, the size and shape equal to that of all the doors to be found in all the apartments in Konoha's eastern residential districts. The knob is golden brass. Nailed carefully near the top, there is a redwood plaque with big bold letters, painstakingly, lovingly inscribed: " _Naruto's room.'_

Once upon a time, this door existed in a place outside of Naruto's mind. It was mulled over and scowled at and the paint was chosen after three hours of careful consideration over colour samples, most of which involved Uzumaki Kushina bellowing at the the store assistants as the Yondaime perused stacks upon stacks of baby clothes. Nowadays, there are only wisps of memories left. The first lies tucked away in the hearts of two chakra imprints bound to the Fox's cage as a fail-safe, the second materialized in the Door. Because when references are needed, the resident two-thousand-year old chakra manifestation is too consumed with rage to form anything lucid, and the main information source is barely out of infancy, then the inner subconscious takes matters into its own hands and seeks out more reliable information deposits.

So the door forms. It is not open but has no lock. From the other side, there are snatches of conversation, words drifting in and out with the same flippancy of a spring breeze. Glimpses of emotion. The sting of physical pain and the exhilaration of job well accomplished.

These impressions travel to the edge of Naruto's door, permeate through to the other side, a little muted but no less understandable.

Separated by hundreds of miles of distance, stationed across the elemental nations, seven other Jinchuriki pause momentarily in their actions to process the shift.

And in a small, dusty room at the back of Konoha's orphanage, much to the relief of his ANBU guards. Naruto quiets from a screeching wail to a soft hiccup, befuddled but curious of the new sounds in his head.

* * *

Yugito notices it first.

She's out in the mountains; fourteen-years-old and bandaged fists smashing a steady rhythm into the trunk of a half-demolished hemlock tree. The early morning light slips in between the leafy canopy above, and Yugito twirls on her heel, blond hair a whipping braid behind her as she moves.

A pivot on her left foot, and she brings her palms up and out, focusing chakra at her fingertips and letting it smash straight through the rough bark. She should be moving on to boulders by now, Yugito knows, but it's beautiful here. The dew at her feet has yet to evaporate, and all around it's quiet. Picturistic. The sky above snakes a ribbon of pastel blue in between the opening of the leaves. Further beyond, a sliver of a transparent moon dangles, not yet gone as its sister the sun creeps slowly above the horizon line.

The air is wet and cool. Her teachers are out, taking a slight break from supervising her training to map out the surrounding landscape, and here, now, with nothing but muted birdsong and the exhale of wind over rustling grass, is the closest Yugito will get to peace.

It's quiet.

Right, left, somersault. Left leg smashing down.

The tree creaks and moans distressingly, splintering at the base of its trunk and slowly toppling backwards. Yugito lands her hands, dirt and grass at her palm, before flipping backwards and straightening to her feet.

Mid movement, mid stride as Yugito moves forward to inspect the damage done, the feeling hits. _"Hungry,"_ it wails. It's not even a word, nothing as coherent as that. Just a rush of emotion, tenaciously single minded the way only an infant mind can produce, creeping warm, prying fingers into the back of her mind. _"Cold. Hungry. Sleepy."_

Yugito is good at blocking the thoughts, the stream of emotion and pain and sometimes even images. Her expertise doesn't quite match some of the older Jinchuriki—it's a matter of experience—but she dutifully ignores the others as much as she can. The older ones tend to similarly mind their own business, and that suits Yugito fine. It's not as if they're friends. Perhaps acquaintances at best, ninja bearing different loyalties towards different villages liable to charge into war should come the slightest imbalance.

" _Coldhungrycold_." Another garble of infantile thoughts, and Yugito meets it with a thin press of her mouth and a flare of bitter irritation. More or less, it is Yugito's own carelessness that let it through. She had gotten too comfortable in the rhythm of her training to notice the slip of her wards.

" _So the new kid's here_." A rumbling voice, deep caverns and oceans and a mountain's solid, indomitable foundation. Killer Bee.

" _I don't think it's necessarily old enough to be called a kid,"_ shoots back Yugito, dryly.

And he's not. The newest Kyuubi Jinchuriki is young, tiny, so much that Yugito can barely make out the gender apart from the niggling whisper of instinct. Its presence had been steadily mounting for days since the the Fox had been resealed, sluggishly inching into the collective mindspace and bearing with it the spark of harsh, molten chakra, windswept plains and the ocean waves customary of the Uzumaki clan. One slow drop at the time it fills in the hole Uzumaki Kushina had left when she died. Yugito had just hoped that the process would have happened much, much, slower.

It's probably the age, she figures sourly. The younger the mind and body, the easier it is to adapt. Which means that Yugito is now stuck sharing her days and nights ignoring the caterwauling of three tiny children.

" _This time was faster even than the Ichibi's_." Bee observes. He seems ready to continue on with that train of thought, but Utakata interrupts before the sentence can form.

" _They're so loud."_ There's a grimace in his voice Yugito finds herself agreeing with. Especially since it's punctuated by another jumbled influx of emotion from three different sources.

A shift. The feel of earth creaking and white hot flames. Rossi's tone is gruff and contemplative all at once, and even without seeing him face to face Yugito can feel the slight shrug.

" _They'll grow out of it in a few years,"_ he says, completely unconcerned.

Yugito knows that with common sense alone. Jinchuriki don't get a choice in these kind of matters, don't get a choice in anything apart from the kill, to be honest, and in comparison to the others Yugito can even count herself lucky, considering she's in Kumogakure and they're not. It's less a question of " _will they"_ and more a question of how long. The Ichibi and Nanabi hosts combined are already yowling up a dreaded migraine, but the Kyuubi added on to that?

"This _is going to be a very long decade_ ," Yugito scowls. And then she's gone from the conversation, a wisp of blue-black flame bobbing away, snapping up wards best as she can against the four that are not projecting and dutifully ignoring the infantile screeching from the three children that are.

" _Prickly,"_ comments Roshi.

" _More like puberty_ ," says Bee.

" _A bit of both,_ " Roshi concedes.

There's a twinge of a wince from Utakata as a murderous, blood curdling bellow hits. It's the Ichibi's host, with the seal work is so shoddy that the Biju's trashing is bleeding into the boy's own mindscape and mixing with the muddled infantile emotions found there.

" _Pain. Anger. HurtMotherPleasehungrysleepWANT."_

All in all, the end result is a truly terrible fusion of incoherent screaming.

"I'm going now," comes the distant, teeth clenched murmur, and Utakata too leaves.

* * *

Six months in, the Kyuubi Jinchuriki finds his way into the collective mindspace.

It's a rough estimate. Utakata has neither the source nor motivation to find out whether the boy managed to sneak his way inside earlier or not, what with the other Jinchuriki studiously ignoring the White Room due to its recent, ankle-biting additions and the intentionally distant relationship they've cultivated. Considering the sheer blast radius of the boy's emotions _(vociferous and bright, far, far too bright, a throbbing star of foxfire and sea-scent chakra)_ Utakata can't blame them, especially since he's doing the exact same thing. The problem is that within the past week or so it had gotten even louder. Dizzyingly so. Which means that the kid has finally, unfortunately, discovered the amplifying properties of the Room.

He's distracted. That's the first and foremost explanation on why, when he goes to sleep and opens his eyes again, instead of the jagged sea coast of his mindscape he's met with surroundings that are blank and glittering. The pull of the Room is tricky like that. It sucks one in, requires a pinpoint focus to get away from, and once a Jinchuriki first manages to access it then that's that, it will forever continue to be the default of their dreams.

There's the manual process, of course, which is one of the only pieces of information the older Jinchuriki are willing to share in length, and it allows Utakata to maneuver himself so that the first thing he sees when knocked unconscious or asleep is _sea_ instead of _white_. Landing elsewhere requires a painstaking amount of meditation and an equal amount of mental willpower, but even hiding the cracks of his mind, half pushing away, half resigned to Saiken's rumbling nagging, is better than the sheer discord that comes with the White Room.

He should probably be used to it by now. They all should.

That doesn't mean he has to like though.

The Kyuubi's host is peering curiously upwards from his thin blanket pile, stacked in a chipped, peeling wooden crib that was once a rich blue but now long faded into a dusty beige. Utakata doesn't understand the laws of the Room, nor does he pretend to, but previous experience with the Ichibi and Nanabi hosts have taught him that if the child isn't old enough to toddle, then they somehow materialize a portion of their surroundings with them. Most of the time, this constitutes the crib and a chew toy. Once, the redhead infant had brought in an entire carpet filled with sand.

At least there's only one child here today. The Nanabi's (whose name is either _Fuu-Fuu_ or _Gahh-guuh-gahh_ ) is awake and content, feelings tinged with tiny wing beats and clear forest chakra. Ichibi's host is awake as well. Less happy though, and wailing in the distance.

Experimentally, Utakata waves a hand. He's ten and small for his age, and the crib is just high enough that if he stands on his tip-toes, he can loom over the wooden edge and look inside.

The boy scrunches his nose. He's so small. Delicate and breakable in the way only new life can be, soft and terribly unlike the gaunt orphans lining Kirigakure's streets.

Utakata studies him. It's… strange.

Blue eyes squint. Small fingers reach up, waving frantically. The boy's cheeks dimple into a grin.

"Hello," says Utakata. There's no real need to say it out loud. He can think it, and the connotation would come across just as well. Maybe even better, considering that the child isn't old enough to understand words.

The boy makes even more exaggerated grabby motions, paired with a high, whining gurgle. Obligingly, Utakata lets his hand dip lower, holding still as the tips of his fingers are snatched by soft, pink palms.

He lets the boy poke and twist until he grows bored and pudgy arms fall back into the tangle of tiny blankets. There's another gurgle. Something like a bored whine. A wave of curiosity washes over him, lukewarm and not his own.

Whiskered cheeks bulge into a pout.

There's no name for this child, not yet that Utakata knows of. When the boy looks up at him imploringly once again, he makes his best rusty smile, twitching up unused muscles.

" _Feeling awkward there,"_ comes Han's voice, like the exhale of steam from the top of a tea kettle.

"I don't want to hear that from you," mutters Utakata, quietly.

The Kyuubi's host makes another grabbing motion, and this time it's accompanied by something like impatience. In response, Utakata slips his hand in between the wooden bars of the crib, fingers pausing as they brush soft fabric.

The boy sniffs.

He clenches his hand. Retracts it, and lets it fall limply to his side.

"Maybe later," Utakata starts, and halts, not quite sure where the rest of that sentence leads to. This is already too much contact. Babies are impressionable, quick to latch on and not let go, and a functioning relationship with another village's Jinchuriki isn't exactly on Utakata's to-do list.

For his part, the boy is making higher, wailing noises now, confusion clouding the previous jittery happiness. More or less, it's likely do to Utakata's own pulse of discomfort.

This is why he tries to avoid the White Room as much as possible: hiding your own emotions there is an impossible task.

Utakata can feel the echo of uneasiness from the others. He turns, putting his back to the crib and the boy. He's a Kiri nin. By itself, the fact that eight other people have access to his surface thoughts and emotions, that eight others have the ability to throw both out of equilibrium, is enough of a security risk, even if they unanimously agree to try to keep it at a bare minimum. He doesn't need to add even the barest of attachment onto that.

" _Careful there,_ " warns Han. He's one of the more genial of the Jinchuriki, and also seems to be the only one willing to engage in a conversation at the moment. _"You're projecting."_

"I know, _"_ Utakata shoots back, too sharp. It's part bitterness, part anger, part festering loathing. He looks back at the boy in the crib and clamps down hard on his emotions.

There's no point to caring.

* * *

Naruto turns two.

Mostly, he sleeps, but he's learned to crawl and walk in the small, empty room the orphanage workers keep him in. His vocabulary is sparse, limited to keywords such as his own name and "Ji-ji" and "food" and "toy," because no one has deemed to teach him anything else and the slingshot of conversations in his head are too quick for him to understand. He likes the wrinkly old man with the billowing, red and white hat. He likes a lot of things, such as his blue blanket and his pretty rubber kunai, but one thing he doesn't like is the woman who comes in every morning and afternoon but never seems to make eye contact.

One day, his crib gets moved to the outside. The outside is where all the other kids are, in a room with tall ceilings and wide halls and rows upon rows of neat cribs. It's loud in a way that's familiar, on-going background noise familiar. Naruto toddles around touching wooden crib legs and attempting to stick a corner of the tattered carpet into his mouth.

When he sleeps, his world filters into whiteness.

It's a big place, but Naruto always lands on the same spot, smack dab in the middle of one of the squiggly shapes in the middle of the drawing on the floor. There's another boy already in the Room. Naruto can feel him, the brush of his presence like grains falling and the itch of those tiny ants he sees in the corners of window sills, marching up his back.

The boy's name is Gaara. Naruto likes Gaara more than his blanket and his toy kunai and the wrinkly man with the billowy hat put together. Like Fuu, Gaara is always there for Naruto, even if Naruto can't see him. And Naruto knows this because he can always, always hear Gaara's voice.

The first few meters of white floor Naruto takes at a wobbly walk, and then he's lunging forwards with a whoop, laughing, as he tackles Gaara backwards into his gourd.

"Gaa-ha!" he greets, smiling, all milk teeth.

Shly, Gaara smiles back. "Naru-naru," he says in return.

Naruto laughs, bright and happy as he pulls Gaara in for a hug. He likes contact, he's found, as all toddlers tend to, but outside the White Room no one apart from the wrinkly old man with the billowy hat gives it to him. Gaara though, Gaara is warm and has the sweetest smiles, and when he's here in the White Room with Naruto he's so clear and happy, the emotions bounding into Naruto's own mind and making him giddy in return. Outside-the-White-Room-Gaara isn't as happy. He's more sad, and sometimes Naruto hears him crying, dark and painful and aching where his heart is, but that's okay. Gaara will always be one of Naruto's favourites.

They play parrot, attempting to mimic the big words the others use. Gaara is always better at this game than Naruto, who lisps and drags on syllables and generally mangles the pronunciation, but Naruto is better at leaping lines ( where they jump on the squiggles of the drawing on the floor and see who can go the longest without touching the white) so it evens out.

Halfway through "tak-yaki," _("t's taka-raka, declares Naruto, while Gaara purses his lips and slowly, patiently forms the necessary combination of vowels and consonants needed to form the word)_ Fuu drops in.

She lands in a shimmer of a heat haze, greens and reds and whites curling into existence. A moment for stability, and then she's solid and real and a head taller than the both of them, green hair bouncing in a short ponytail as she skips over.

Naruto likes Fuu, the same way he likes Gaara. And maybe love is the more accurate way to describe the soaring, sun-bright adoration he feels.

Fuu is older than Gaara. She has the loveliest eyes, the colour of the early mornings when Naruto can see streaks of rising sun piercing through the orphanage windows, egg yolk yellow and warm and bonfire-beautiful. It bathes the room in honeyed shades, spills across the floorboards and casts neat light patterns into the swirls of the wood. Naruto would sleep tucked under this blanket of sunshine and exhale, content.

Apparently, as the oldest, Fuu gets to ruffle their hair and suffer no repercussions. She does just that as soon as she's in distance to do so, following it up with a poke at Naruto's pout and Gaara's shy, downcast blush.

Then she waves at them to clear the space and sits down, a tiny, green haired girl with two tinier boys at each knee. She clears her voice imperiously. Once, Naruto was told that all good storytellers do this before they begin their recollection, and he thinks that Fuu is a very good story teller indeed.

Gaara loves Fuu's stories, and so does Naruto. In a way, it's less the story itself and more the cadence of her voice, rising high and low, loud and quiet, spinning a tale meant for him and Gaara alone. No one at the orphanage tells him stories. The other kids too are quickly snatched, gone by adult hands whenever he tries to play or make conversation.

Here though, no one is going to snatch Gaara or Fuu away. They are the White Room's occupants, and the White Room is safe, is home and storytime and a hundred games formed from the imagination of three children.

It is voices, bouncing off the walls as a lullaby, whether they be loud or quiet, sad or joyful, whether they be carrying the tinge of smoke-fire, or hot earth, or mountains or deep river valleys or the air prior to a summer shower.

* * *

" _They're so happy it's nauseating,_ " grumbles Yugito. She's sixteen, a little less bitter and quite a bit more powerful, and had just nearly toppled from her perch on a high rise building after the newest surge of blinding, giddy, glee.

Pain is easy to block out. Melancholy and loneliness and self-loathing are companions older than her memories stretch back.

Happiness is a different emotion, so unexpected and alien that none of them know quite what to do with it.

Through the link, Bee sends back what feels like a shrug. " _They're burning bright l'il Yugito. Just for a bit, go with the flow."_

That was… not as bad as usual. Yugito sighs, swinging her legs over the hundred feet drop of the apartment roof, spying gray asphalt and the bobbing heads of people, carriages, miniature doll-sized market stalls crowding beneath.

" _They're children,_ " she states. It feels a little like resignation. Yugito herself doesn't remember having a childhood, only the grip of a kunai in her hand, training, training, training. Always.

She quiets as Fuu's voice rises into a crescendo, a cliff-hanger. The tight wire excitement of two children floods the mental link like a dam overflowing.

" _And that's when momma-rabbit had an idea!"_ Fuu says. " _See, if Mister Tiger wanted to eat the rabbit family, it was cuz he was really, really hungry. So momma-rabbit gave him a polite invitation and set out a great, big pot of vegetable stew by the fields for Mister Tiger, and when Mister ate the stew and grew full he didn't want to eat the rabbit family anymore! And from then on, Mister Tiger and momma-rabbit had an a-gre-ment. Mister Tiger would help bring vegetables and Momma rabbit would cook them for Mister Tiger to eat."_ A pause. The other two children oohed. " _And they became friends and lived happily, ever after."_

 _"Children_ ," Yugito repeats herself. She tries not to scowl at just how utterly, terrifically nonsensical the story was. At best, those are civilian morals. At worst, they're a sure-fire recipe to get a shinobi murdered in their sleep.

Han rolls in. His chakra is warm and sluicing, fine but solid, a contradiction of sorts.

 _"I think it was rather original,"_ he defends.

Yugito sends a formidable wave of sheer unimpressedness his way.

* * *

The thing is: Jinchuriki don't get rights like freedom, or choice, or their own personal morality.

They are weapons first, shinobi second, their own person last of all.

(Three children would like to differ.)

* * *

...

* * *

 **Endnotes:** Umm. Basically. I scoured the internet for Jinchuriki-centric fanfiction and after finding close to zero, I gave up and just decided to write my own.

Tell me what you enjoyed, tell me what you didn't. I have a general idea of where this is going, and feedback is always appreciated.


	2. Glass Ceilings

**Warnings** : Canon-AU, GEN, Jinchuriki-centric, liberties with timeline and backstories

 **Author's Notes:** The reception for chapter one was seriously amazing (you guys are an A+ audience, wow. That was a lot more feedback than I had anticipated.) So here we have chapter two! In which Yagura's surprise appearance is met with very little fanfare and a lot of frustration for all parties involved, and the Hokage speculates.

* * *

Chapter Two: Glass Ceilings

* * *

Naruto is eating eel onigiri when the feeling hits.

He has four of them: sticky white rice with bits of sesame seeds and a band of crisp seaweed wrapped around the middle, stacked on a thin paper plate and balanced on his knees. The weather is crisp for Fire country this time of year, the sky above blue and crystalline. Bursts of warm wind brush at his ankles. It's the type of weather that translates to Naruto wearing shorts instead of pants, and also lets him sneak away with nagging the Old Man rambunctiously for a mug of iced, creamy chocolate with the usual Sunday ramen.

The rice balls are soft and salty and excellent, perfect for a mid-afternoon snack. Naruto packs away two in the record-breaking speed of thirty seconds, and on his third he skids to a slow munch, savouring the chew of the rice between his teeth, the flavour of eel on his tongue.

It's delicious. Kind of unfortunate though, since the owners of that particular stand tend to serve him the dried-out wares whenever he tries to buy from them himself.

He's halfway down that train of thought and then pushing it adamantly away. The rice balls are wonderful and the Hokage gave him free-ramen coupons earlier today, and later Naruto will go into the White Room to hear Fuu recount the results of the glitter-bomb she had been chirping away about all morning. The people with their silly squinty eyes can't do anything to make him feel sad or lonely or aching. They're not _allowed_. Naruto feeling sad will mean Fuu and Gaara feeling sad too, the burden multiplied across the link, and Naruto hates it when that happens.

Outside the White Room, Gaara is so fiercely hurting already. He's scraped raw and tender, heart always half in fragments because of Sunagakure's populace. The others too: Yugito and Utakata and Han, all of them are fluctuating between different shades of bitter and abandoned, and Naruto doesn't want to add to that, never wants to add on to that. He wants to be Fuu. Fuu, who is cheerful even when she's not, whose joy is hot cinnamon buns fresh out of the oven, the swirl of noodles in broth on a cold winter day, warm and salty and a balm to his heart as he tips back the ramen bowl.

He wants to be Fuu, whose laughter resonates until he too feels like he can fly, like he can do anything, wrapped in this secure cocoon of love and safety and boundless abandon. To give these carefully wrapped emotions to his favourites-better than the Hokage, better than old man Teuchi and even his miso ramen- -to the ones that have always been with him, their thoughts and the pulse of their chakra like a second set of veins over his own bloodstream.

He wants to-

An impact like a detonation. And then Naruto is toppling forwards, previous thoughts scattering like sheets of flyaway paper. The air from his lungs puff out in a noiseless choke as he slams hard into the dirt, rice balls tumbling through the tall park glass. It's nothing physical, no aches or torn tendons or broken bones, but it is _something_ all the same.

Something like a jackhammer. A jackhammer and an entire constriction crew coming to the decision that Naruto's brain is a good place to set up a demolition zone.

His head _rings._

Vaguely, distantly, Naruto is aware that he's face down and possibly eating a very interesting concession of dirt and fallen leaves. Most of his higher mental functions though, have fled, and the ones that remain are curled up in a feeble position and screaming at his brain to _SHUTuP BeQUiET OW._

The problem is that it's not Naruto. It is not Naruto at all. And the harsh, intrusive bellowing is still clawing away at his ears.

He's screaming, he registers, out loud and inside at the same time, when the rolling hiss slams through the link, pitched low and furious and tinged in Yugito's fire-lightning. " _ **Quiet**_."

In response, Naruto chokes out a low, keening sound. The throb of a metal lid slamming smack into his skull doesn't reside at all. He can hear the others though, their distress flooding in from all directions. Gaara is shaking; Fuu curled in on herself, screaming nearly as loud as Naruto is.

" _What is this?"_ murmurs Utakata. He sounds calmer than the rest of them, but still drawn and pale. There's a string of underlying tension in his thought that weaves ice-greys and metal-golds to the front of Naruto's mind.

A flood of calm.

It's Bee and Roshi, the big man with his gingerbread skin-colour like that of the soft cookies Naruto gets to have on the winter holidays-who's tall and speaks oddly and brings cool swords with him into the White Room. And Roshi, smaller than Bee, but still infinitely taller than Naruto. The one with the funny beard Naruto had yanked at first meeting and was forbidden to tug ever again.

They're the "oldest" and "most attuned," whatever that means. Naruto knows them well _(underlying bedrock, compressed over millions of years, solid and strong and unyielding. The rush of hot-hot-hot sun over dusty ravines swept. Canyons that stretch and echo_ ).

Maybe not as well as Fuu and Gaara, but still well.

" _It's the Sanbi,_ " Roshi explains, irritation a wave of rolling magma. " _There's a new host."_

 _Sanbi. San-bi._ It's like thinking through an underwater cyclone, tearing through his mind. Everything is floating and foggy and refracted through the weight of the water pressing down down down.

He tries to breathe.

Jolts of sharp irritation herald Yugito's snapping thoughts. _"This never happened with any of the previous hosts."_ She is all narrowed: clenched fists and slanted eyes and pretty mouth pressed into a thin, pink line. And it's odd, how now that her barriers have been shattered Naruto can feel the tight coil of her body language so easily. _"Not even with Shukaku's botched seal."_

Roshi sends a mental shrug.

" _Frankly, I'm not quite sure what's happening either. Bee?"_

There is a stretch of silence. The pounding eases up a bit, enough that Naruto can process where he is outside of the link. He takes a great big breath of clean air, letting his lungs inflate. And when he doesn't taste grass and feels the slap of the wind on his cheeks instead he jerks upwards, eyes wide and limbs flailing with the blur of Konoha's rooftops whirling past.

"Arrgh-" he muffles into a dark shoulder, tasting bamboo lacquer and newly oiled metal. "Huh-"

Wrenching his head around with great effort, Naruto switches his gaze from the rush of colourful roof tiles to meet the side of a porcelain mask. It's a man, the kind he sees in the Old man's office sometimes. The kind he sees following him, with their animal-masks and soundless movement and grey-black armour.

Not a threat.

Naruto knows these people are not a threat. They are the Hokage's guards, are Naruto's silent house guests sometimes, who whisk him away into the Old Man's tower on Sunday mornings, like this morning three hours ago, to talk and eat ramen.

 _Not a threat,_ says a kernel of logic in his brain that's buried deep.

But right now his head is a gong stuck on vibration, and even though it's dulled the force is still enough to make Naruto's teeth chatter. And he's scared. So scared. He doesn't know if that trembling knot in his stomach is made of his own feelings or someone else's with the link all jumbled up in chaos. It doesn't matter if it isn't his: with his heartbeat up his throat, that bone crushing terror sure feels his.

The sky and the earth are rushing by far too fast. Naruto is dizzy with it. Nauseus. His stomach feels ready to be upturned at any second, and the continuous slap of the wind onto his face isn't helping in the slightest. He tries to bite, but his teeth don't do much but scrape the top layer of a shoulder plate, and he tries to kick but his legs are too short to do anything but flounder in air. Leaping from the edge of a roof, the man jolts beneath him. Naruto's chin hits the shoulder plate. Just as something sour and terrible claws its way up his throat.

 _"Lemme down!"_ he wants to demand.

It comes out more as a, "mwerhghhh."

"Hokage-same would be glad to know you're awake," the masked man states, just as Bee resumes.

" _Gyuki says that there's something off 'bout the Sanbi. It's real docile this time, 'specially for a brand new sealin'."_ He sounds a little disturbed, a little curious.

Roshi interjects. " _Perhaps it was the technique?"_

" _It would be one hell of a technique,"_ Han tacks on.

" _Who's the host?"_ demands Yugito.

A squeeze of disorientation from Fuu's link makes him snap his eyes shut. " _Hurts."_

That's the last Naruto hears. A spike. Pain that make stars blossom in blacks and yellows at the back of his eyes. For a brief flicker of a moment, things go dark—

And then a wash of vertigo slams down on top of the suffocating _ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump_ from the marching band pounding through his head and Naruto crumples onto the floor of the Room, small, pink palms dragging chipped fingernails down the lines of the seal.

It's hurting. Everything is hurting. Like the time Han got injured but a thousand times worse, like a carnivorous maw clamping down around his skull.

Something harsh and thrill ignites through the air. It takes Naruto a moment to realise he's screaming. Or crying. Or both.

It takes another moment for the other Jinchuriki to react.

" _You idiot_." The words are low and cutting, carrying with them the current of deep displeasure, but the emotion Utakata projects is that of utter calm. Still pond waters on a perfect summer day. The motion of flowers petals, carried by swirling eddies as they drift downstream. The series of recollections flash by quickly, but they do their job, cocooning the pain and the building pressure and leaving Naruto in a peaceful haze.

" _You know the Room has amplifying properties_ " he says sharply. " _The closer you are the greater the backlash_."

Naruto leaves his forehead pressed against the cool floor, taking quick, shallow staccato breaths. His body feels as if somebody had dumped him into a vat of boiling water and left him there for a week. A limp, desolate noodle.

" _Didn't mean to,"_ he protests, after second when his brain reboots and remembers functions other than pain. He scrunches his nose against the odd, glass smooth texture of the floor. " _Everything went dark and weird."_

A pause on the other side. "... _You were knocked out?"_

He blinks. " _Whazzat_ ?"

Another pause. Utakata mumbles something that sounds vaguely like _mental wards_ and _Shukaku_ and _Konoha-nin_ before returning at full volume. _"Never mind_ ," He dismisses. There's a frown in his voice. " _Try not to_ _move_." The projection is still holding up, unwavering as it spins a safety net of serenity over the now-distant ringing. Utakata is odd like that, Naruto finds. Always saying words that don't match up with his insides.

Everything is still aches though, so he obeys. He lies on the floor and keeps his fingers pressed where they are. His breaths are still. Quiet.

Overhead, the others are ricocheting half-formed sentences.

" _Shouldn't have affected us in the first place_ ," Rossi says thoughtfully. _"There's been no time for the link to form."_

" _If the seal were..." Edges Han._

" _What kind of seal would work that way, is the question."_

They bounce theories. Outlandish ones. Some not so outlandish ones. None of them are exactly experts on seals, and even though backlash from the link is common it's never been so sudden. Not from a new Jinchuriki, at the least. The adults are edgy. They are wrung tense, both from the ringing and the fact that this is possibly the longest and actual conversation to be held within the link (not snippets, not wayward flashes, but _actual_ conversation) and that, in a way, is more deeply uncomfortable than the situation with the Sanbi.

Naruto gets bored.

There's only so long he can stay sprawled on the floor, and no way to tell time in the White Room. It feels like a million years though. Without Gaara and Fuu and instead paired with the clutter of words that are more jumbled syllables than coherent meaning, Naruto is so, incredibly bored.

Besides, the ringing has faded to a near nothingness. In its place, the steady, constant thrum of energy is itching right underneath Naruto's skin, calling him to run and jump and _get up._

He complies.

The other option would be sleep. Not White Room dream sleep but sleep sleep, where everything goes dark, goes black and time passes as quickly as lightning striking ground. Naruto has never gotten the hang of slipping into that place. What's the point of it really, when there are adventures and fun waiting in the White Room instead?

He props his elbows on the floor and shimmies upwards, using the momentum to jump to his feet. The Room is how it always has been: white walls, white everything, with delicate, tapered line work sweeping the floor. Not a scratch of damage from the braising storm.

The first thing Naruto notices is the person sprawled across the floor.

His clothes are a muddy green, his hair five shades lighter, feathery and grey tinged as the down of a newborn owlet. Lying on the ground near his hand there's a black, hooked staff with a blooming flower attached near the curve, wedged face down.

Naruto edges closer. Crouching, he peers over at the stranger's face-or at least, the side not pressed to the floor. He's _old_ -not Bee or Roshi old, Utakata-old, Naruto guesses, but that's still _old._

His hair looks soft and fluffy and luxurious. Naruto pokes it curiously.

The stranger doesn't stir.

He pokes harder.

There's something about the stranger, Naruto figures, mouth bowing into a frown as he moves on to tugging at the soft, slippery material of the green scarf. Something foreign and alien but not. This close, he can feel the radiating energy coming off of him in waves-softer than Bee's, flowing quicksand smooth like Gaara's. There are always eight chakra signatures residing in the White Room, no matter the frequency and noise level, and Naruto knows them all by heart. Even blindfolded and deaf and suffering from a severe case of amnesia, he would still recognize them without hesitation, the same as how the others can pinpoint Naruto's own.

This stranger is not apart of the White Room. Or rather, he _was_ not apart of the White Room.

Now though, if Naruto closes his eyes and shuts down all his other senses, the same way Fuu had taught him to nearly a year ago, he can hear it. Movement. A steady stream of vibration filling in the gaping hole that Naruto didn't know to have existed.

His fingers knot tightly into the fabric of the scarf, knees glued together, shoulders hunched as he tries to reach deeper into the white. And there it is-that horrific caterwaul, akin to the thundering hooves of a buffolo stampede crashing over war-torn lands. Skimming the surface, Naruto's first instinct is to wrench back. Wrench away because _nonono_ he doesn't want that near his head ever again. _It hurts. Hurts so bad. So, so bad. Want it to_ _ **GO AWA**_ _Y._

He's halfway to the surface, eyes already fluttering open as he jerks backwards and stumbles, landing harshly onto the floor.

 **Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.**

There's a ringing in his skull.

Except this time, the ringing isn't the only entity present.

Fresh rain. The clouds shining bright and luminous in the sky beyond. Polar currents nudging warm air upwards to heave a sudden fox-shower over forest land, water droplets sliding down fresh green-veined leaves and bursting as they splatter against the undergrowth. This is water, like Utakata's, but more enormous in its entirety. Utakata is long, meandering rivers gushing downstream, with pressure intense enough to slice rock should he wish. This is wilder. The Old Man had once told Naruto about storms and cyclones, had illustrated it over a book on weather phenomenons squirreled out of the library. The eye of the storm is always the stillest, Naruto had been told, and this is like that: all push and pull and chaos on the outside.

In the core though, there is silence.

Or maybe the chaos is just the banging headache intertwined with the wind-water chakra. Naruto isn't sure.

It takes a second for Naruto to be knocked out of his daze. He's on the floor, elbows clacking against the odd-glass texture, with the stranger's soft chakra a buzzing reverberation in his bones.

The stranger, who's still face down and seemingly unconscious in the White Room. It's a bit of a novelty, considering that Naruto didn't know that one could, in fact, be anything but awake in the White Room.

... Maybe he needs to poked again?

Rocking back onto his feet, Naruto creeps his way over the two feet of distance. He nudges a pale cheek with one hand, and when that doesn't garner a reaction moves onto yanking furiously at the stranger's scarf. Trailing green ends tickle his bare ankles, and he tugs harder, the fabric bunching under Naruto's fingers. There's nothing. The stranger doesn't even twitch. Or breathe-wait no. Naruto squints and lets go of the scarf to crouch closer. He doesn't think that one actually _needs t_ o breathe when they are in the Room, but...

With great effort, Naruto rolls and heaves and pushes the stranger onto his back, burbling out an apology as the man's head lolls to the side and bumps against the pointy end of the staff. His chest is rising though, in short, shallow bursts, so at the very least that means he is breathing.

Still no reaction. That's just _weird._

Of course, there's still that other method. The not-to-be-mentioned method, which had been passed down to him by Fuu (as all his truly useful lessons are) and used tactfully once before. It had worked for that one silly orphanage worker woman, with her stern glasses and equally stern bun. Of course, he had gotten scolded for it that particular time, (and the Old Man had worn his painfully-disappointed face, which was even worse than the no-ramen-today-face) so Naruto had sworn on his ability to tie his own shoes not to do it again.

The Old Man won't know about this though.

Naruto considers the stranger. Narrows his eyes. _Hmm..._

This is how Utakata's voice catches him: mid-lunge through the air, arms flung over his head as if he were dive-bombing into a pillow fort with a gleeful holler. He's a second and a half from the jarring impact, laughing in glorious triumph.

 _"I_ _ **told**_ _you not to move."_

The voice is loud. It's caustic and razor-edged, and also the loudest Naruto has ever heard Utakata project. For a second, the preliminary shock hits the same way an explosive tag hits rock: singeing and leaving him frozen in the air. Then he smacks the stranger's back with a drenched cat's yowling screech, limbs floundering everywhere and his forehead an inch away from the floor.

 _"Oh or the love of-"_ The rest of Utakata's sentence is bitten off in a pained grimace. A shudder of tingling pins and needles roll up Naruto's arm.

Naruto winces.

 _Ouch._

Then the shuddering sensation passes over and he wriggles onto the floor, hands braced for balance. "Hey!" His voice echoes into the void. He receives shot of boiling irritation in return. "Hey. I almost had him!"

 _"You nearly pulled me in with you."_ Utakata's too polite to be growling, but it's a close enough thing. _"Don't do that."_

Naruto thinks this over, pulling himself up to his feet as he does so. The stranger is, somehow, still not awake. "Oh," he says. He tips his head towards the cieling and asks back. "T's why you 'ad stab yourself?"

 _"It helps_ ," sighs Utakata. " _Now stay still. I can't hold the projection if you keep on running into that-"_ his voice twists tinnily. Naruto toes a foot into the stranger's ribs. _"Thing every five seconds_."

"It's not a thing," Naruto corrects. There's a odd-stitch scar on the stranger's face he's just noticing now, one that runs a jagged line beneath his eye. "It's a person. Hey! You wanna see him?"

There is an incredulous pause.

" _Pardon_?" wonders Utakata. A pulse of confusion travels down the link, cracking through the still calmness. For a moment the roaring intensifies tenfold.

Hurriedly, Naruto clamps his hands over his ears, bellowing . "A PERSON! HE AIN'T WAKING UP THOUGH!"

Utakata's confusion fluctuates. Slowly, hesitantly he responds _. "A new person. In the room."_

Is there anywhere else they could be? "Well yeah."

He makes a noise, something halfway between a strangled moan and a truly arduous sigh. The pressure on Naruto's head is once again lifted though, so evidently Utakata's got his composure back. Awesome.

 _"The others,"_ the thought is pitched low in a murmur. _"Did you-"_

 _"We heard ya loud and clear,_ " interrupts Bee. He seems to be paying rapt attention for once. " _The Sanbi barely got sealed a few hours ago though."_

Another pause. Another wave of confusion and frustration and justified homicide. The others are gathering. Their thoughts rebound through the room and dart crystal clear into Naruto's mind.

When the conversation restarts, it's Han who contemplates _, "What was the record again? For the Room?"_

Roshi's sighs the answer _._ He sends a quick, disjointed image of blonde hair and blue eyes and what feels of a woman, soft but sharp, hair a curtain of red behind her.

 _"Hey that's me!"_ Squawks Naruto, feeling inordinately pleased with himself. "I s _et a re-c-co-whatamacallit? I never knew that!"_

" _Six months, then, more or less,"_ interjects Utakata.

" _Well now it's six minutes_ ," mutters Yugito, clearly frustrated. " _That still doesn't explain a thing."_

 _"The backlash._ " Roshi scowls out the explanation. "I _f he got pushed in at the moment of the sealing, that would have caused it. How he got pushed in in the first place I'm not sure. There should't even be a link."_

"... So... Are you gonna see 'im or not?" asks Naruto.

* * *

Twice, Roshi remembers. Only twice, in his forty five years, has all nine Jinchuriki gathered willingly in the confines of the room that binds them together. He is an old man. Amongst the ninja, he can be considered a veteran amongst veterans, one who's hands are washed in the blood of the Second Great War, one who had willingly left his village, gone into a seclusion so deep that none could find him, when the wounds that lead to the Third War began to fester.

There had been no reason for them to meet. And even should such a reason have existed, the likelyhood for everyone to agree was still astronomically low. For all their grandeur and bloody history, the Ninja villages are a newly established concept, barely a hundred years old in age, and the Jinchuriki system even younger.

The first generation of Jinchuriki had been hardened warriors. They were shinobi who teethed in the era of the warring clans, who were trained in the arts of the battle earlier than they could walk. This was one of history's darker ages, consisting of Less honor, more survival. The nine understood how delicate the balance of the tender political systems were. They understood that the tailed beasts they harbored were (and they still are) one of the main preventive measures in maintaining that fragile peace. After an entire life spent looking over one's shoulder since they were old enough to grip a kunai, they also understood that fraternizing with the enemy, although an inevitable consequence of being a host, was a thing to be kept at a bare minimum.

The second generation had sealed younger. Long experiments with trial and error had taught village heads that children handled the malicious chakra better than any grown men. Those such as Uzumaki Kushina and Killer Bee, both not yet tipping the mark of adolescence but still old enough to understand the weight of _burden_ and l _oyalty_ were primarily used. It was a delicate balance, because Jinchuriki needed to know loyalty above all else. And the weight of a Tailed Beast, both in the whispers inside and outside of the host's head, didn't make trust easy.

The new hosts had been such curious little runts, Roshi remembered. Too curious for their own good. It had been a while since a new Jinchuriki had managed to stay alive long enough for the link to form, let along drop into the White Room. Kushina had been a given, Killer Bee a surprise. Their reactions at the link had been equal parts suspicion and gleeful awe, with Kushina, at nine-years old, having flailed out of her chair the moment the voices began.

These had been children raised in a time of relative peace, and their reaction reflected that. They were wary, as ninja customarily were to an unknown variable, but still far more open than that of the generation before them.

Conversation occurred, which had been a leg up from previous interactions. They talked about mundane things. Words and thoughts that leaked through from shoddy mental barriers. Answering jolts to flickers of wayward emotion. It was a relationship that could only be comfortably fostered by pre-teens.

But a war had been brewing on the horizon. Two wars, in fact, in a span of fifteen measly years. What had barely passed as a tentative acquaintanceship for the younger ones had quickly been cut short as they were sent out into the battlefield. Everyone was killing everyone, and the chances of someone you knew having been brutally murdered by a ninja of "x" village had risen to the astronomical proportions of one hundred percent. It was mutually agreed that Jinchuriki were the most dangerous element on the battlefield-too powerful, too reckless, hard-pressed to be defeated by anyone less than a Kage-and suddenly, if unsurprisingly, Jinchuriki were attempting to keep others of their kind as bedridden as possible.

The link, like everything, had been weaponized very effectively.

Anger, pain, whatever drastic emotion that could be scrounged up, all of it was bundled and boomeranged through the link, projected as loudly as they possibly can in hopes of delibiting another. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Projecting from the White Room had garnered better results, but it was a double-edged sword. One lapse of concentration inside its walls and it had been so, so easy to knock a host over with the amplified pain.

In retrospect, it had probably been a step back from the first generation.

The newest ones, on the other hand, are so _young_.

Yugito and Utakata, at the least, had been handed their Bijuu as toddlers. Fuu and Gaara and Kushina's boy had been sealed as _infants_. They are blank slates, and the unfortunate reality is that their greatest influence are the voices in their heads. They know not of war, none of that viscous smog and unending stream of bodies. Maybe little Gaara understands it, but certainly not Fuu or Kushina's boy.

Those two are sun-bright. They overflow with a vividness that makes Roshi feel tired and old. There is so much adoration in them, so much hope. And neither of their villages seem inclined to correct them from this behavior. Konoha tries, Roshi knows and hears, but Naruto has known no other treatment since birth. And with the examples the other Jinchuriki set it is not as if he believes his own circumstances are out of the norm. Not-quite-understanding he may be (too young to understand, really), and sometimes prickly with justified anger, but never seething with rage and hatred.

He might, when he gets older. When his line of perspective is larger. Because Jinchuriki are sacrifices, are weapons, and that is how they will always be seen.

For now, the boy is happy. He's babbling noisily into the link, thrilled from whatever new arrival the Sanbi decided to drag in, and greatly irritating both Yugito and Utakata in the process. Considering he had been screaming his head off not half an hour ago, this is rather remarkable.

Roshi closes his eyes, loosens his shoulders, and lets himself drop into whiteness.

* * *

Bee is the second to enter the White Room. He's after Utakata, who has already materialized and proceeded to stare blatantly at the kid lying supine on the floor. The same kid that Fox-boy is poking with great and evident relish, fingers tugging at the off-grey hair and the green clothing and crumpled turquoise sash.

He's older than Bee expected. Barely looking like he's past the average academy graduate age, but for a Jinchuriki that's still above and beyond the usual sealing cut-off. There's a mist forehead protector lying slanted near his waist though, so at least that explains Utakata, if not how in the Raikage's name he managed to slingshot himself into the Room.

"He ain't waking up." Fox-boy flaps his hands with great emphasis.

Bee gets that much from just looking at him. It's... unnatural. Inside the mindscape, at least something should be turned on.

Then again, Gyuki had informed him that the Sanbi was also in a deep forced sleep. So maybe some of that was transferred?

"I can see he's not," says Yugito, mouth twisted down into a scowl. She's on the other side of the sealing ring, with just a slight flicker of blue flame to herald her appearance. Taking two steps forward to the center of the circle, she transitions to a low crouch, bandaged fingers fluttering at the kid's throat, searching for signs of vitality.

Or maybe she just wants to strangle him. From what Bee had managed to sort through from her snarl of incoherent rage, Yugito had been mid-mission when the backlash hit and had gotten injured in the process.

Hopping over, Fox-boy peers up at her with wide eyes. "Watcha doing?" he asks.

"Checking," says Yugito back, ever curtly. Her eyes don't stray from the Sanbi's host.

Along with the two other children, Han is the next one to come in. He's bulky and clanging, and when he drops into the Room, Fox-boy's attention is quickly diverted from Yugito to the new unknown.

"Heya!" the boy greets, scampering over to crane his neck up and up at the towering man. "Why're ya covering your face?"

Before Han can edge in an answer, another shift in the Room indicates Bug-girl's presence. She's hurtling herself forwards the moment her feet touches the floor, in a motion that speaks of many, many visits to the White Room, arms outstretched and her voice pitched to a plaintive, unhappy wail.

"RU-CHAAAAN!" Fox-boy whirls, and then bug-girl's tackling him head first into Han's legs. Her face is blotchy red, her features squelched together. She sniffs into Fox-boy's shoulder, pulling him a tight, choking hug that he returns.

"I was worried," she muffles, before pulling back and blinking big, glossy eyes, lower lip wobbling threateningly. "You were screaming so _loud_."

Then she tips back to face Han, the surprise on her face evident, as if just realizing he was present in the Room. "Do you need a hug too?" Bug-girl demands more than asks. She doesn't wait for an answer. Swerving around Naruto, she wraps her arms around one of Han's legs, pressing her cheek to the fabric of it.

The kid is tiny. Just barely reaching Han's knee. She seems very pleased with herself, unlike Han, who's mainly just frozen.

Social skills are not, unfortunately, on the criteria for a well-balanced ninja.

Opposite of her, Fox-boy climbs Han like a tree, deftly using the man's armour as handholds and swinging himself onto Han's shoulders. Han himself holds stock still, but whether that is out of concern of dislodging the children or just shock at the unexpected contact is hard to tell. His emotions are dim and well hidden, and drowned by the sheer balls of energy that consist of Bug-girl and Fox-boy.

"Free hugs for everyone!" Fox-boy crows from his perch. He proceeds to make good on this point by wrapping thin stick arms around Han's face-or at least, the part of his face that's visible, between the mask and the hat.

"Everyone!" Bug-girl agrees gleefully.

After ten more seconds of hugs—wherein Fox-boy attempts to yank off Han's hat without success—Bug-girl unlatches herself. She pats Han's leg. Beaming up at him with gaped teeth, then turns and motions Fox-boy down, seemingly ready to make even better on his proclamation by surveying everyone in the room and subjecting them to the same treatment.

Utakata takes a slight step backwards. Bee spies him out of the corner of his shades, even as Bug-girl makes a clear beeline to the six tails-host. A roll of discomfort pricks lightly at his side.

"Don't even think about it brats," clucks Yugito, who Bee knows to have discovered an unrepentant loathing for children underneath the age of ten in her teenage years. Something about them being too touchy feely. And how they kept attempting to yank her hair and tangling it in the process. And the drool, dear Raikage the drool. _Why do these creatures exist._

Not that Yugito's interacted with that many children under ten. She's a serious, dedicated kunoichi, loyal to her village and proud of her power. If anything though, her training has worn her thin and kept her isolated -too few human connections, too much time clocked on the battlefield-but she's working on that part. Once you earn their trust, the tailed beasts are the best partners ever, and even though as a kid Yugito was angry at a damned lot of things, Matatabi has always been spoken of fondly.

Besides, she's gotten much better at it. These days, there's less acidic loneliness from her chain in the link, more cat-like content. And when Bee tries out one of his new raps she only punches hard enough to send him to the opposite wall instead of through it.

Fox-boy advances. He hops off of Han's shoulder and bounces closer to Yugito, as if taking her refusal as a challenge. For her part, Yugito takes a single glance up from the Sanbi-host's body to shoot the blond a withering glare.

There's a scream, a thump-

Utakata dives to the side just in time to avoid collision-

And raccoon-boy lands. It's less of a landing and more of a full-body flop, himself a pile of pale dessert scarves and stick-thin limbs. He's totting around a gourd that's bigger than he is on his back, and when he materializes the first thing he does is keel over, face and palms smacking the floor of the Room with a distinct _thwak_.

"Ra-chan?" Bug-girl's eyes are wide, mouth open in an o of surprise. She had looked ready to bodycheck Utakata into a hug before raccoon-boy had all but passed out at her feet. "Gaara-chan? Gaara?" She kneels. The boy's scarves tangle at her ankles, but Bug-girl doesn't even look at them. Her hands are steady at raccoon-boy's shoulders, holding him still as he shudders."t's wrong?"

"Gaara?" Echoes fox-boy, all thoughts of Yugito forgotten as he darts over to squish himself by Bug-girl's side.

Hands pressed over his ears, raccoon-boy doesn't give them an answer. Just scrunches up his mouth and scrunches up his eyes and makes the high, pained cry of an injured animal.

"It's mostly likely his tailed beast." Roshi's steps are slow but sure as he picks his way around Yugito-and when did he materialize anyways? He crouches down to bug-girl's level, inspecting both her frown and Fox-boy's mulish expression. "We can't do anything about his seal, from this side. Let him wait it out."

Apparently, this isn't good enough for Fox-boy. He tugs at the edge of Roshi's pant-leg, blue eyes wide, and demands: "Then why ain't we feelin' it? We can always feel it when Gaara's hurtin' bad."

"Considering," Roshi says dryly. "That there are four of us attempting to sink this place into a meditative coma, it would be stranger if we _could_ feel anything."

"The what?" asks Fox-boy.

Roshi rethinks his words. "The Calm, you could call it."

"Oh," says Fox boy. His brow crinkles. Bug-girl is carefully brushing a clump of dark hair out of raccoon boy's eyes, letting him rest the top of his fluffy red head in her shoulder. His hands are still clapped firmly over his ears, but at least the shaking has lessened. That's progress, Bee supposes. "I thou' it was just Utakata."

"He had you in particular, yes." Roshi says.

And in return, the backlash had smacked Utakata the hardest. Bee and Roshi and Yugito had all been concentrating their efforts in stabilizing the room, in stabilizing all of the links and preventing the rebounds of pain from occurring. But when Fox-boy had somehow blacked out, it was Utakata that had grudgingly taken upon himself to build up a barrier around the boy's mental link. Both the Nanabi and Ichibi hosts have experience with fortifying their inner shields. Roshi had taught Bug-girl how to quiet her projecting, and Raccoon-boy's resistance ad developed due to Shukaku's botched seal. But Kushina's kid? He had no mental wards whatsoever. Someone had had to go and set up dampeners, or else the entire link might have come crashing down.

There had been a risk, in doing that. There always is. Quelling the emotions of a single chain in the link means opening up a more personal connection on both sides. Should recoil hit it hits fiercely, especially since the boy had been in the White Room at the time.

"Oh," says Fox-boy, again. "So Gaara'll get better right?"

Roshi sighs. "Give him time, brat."

Then he's standing again, leaving the Fox-boy to his task of squeezing the non-existent air from raccoon-boy's lungs in a rib-crushing hug. He plods over to Yugito's side, and bends over to squint at the Turtle-kid's face.

"Older than I expected." Roshi observes. "Eleven? Twelve? Huh. I'm surprised the seal isn't rupturing, all things considered."

"He's _twenty-two_." Utakata contributes, sounding greatly dazed.

"That's-"

 _"Twenty two,_ " Utakata repeats, with great emphasis.

Yugito stares. Bee ambles closer for a better look. Twenty two is... old. Too old. Yes, there are certain individuals whose chakra resonates particularly well with a Tailed beast's, to the point that their life isn't at risk with the introduction of the foreign chakra, but...

Most of those are of the Uzumaki clan, and the only Uzumaki Bee knows is the Fox-boy right here. Turtle-kid's chakra may be dense and controlled, large in its reservoir, but it isn't Uzumaki.

"More and more mysteries," Roshi grumbles. He squints. "You're sure he's twenty-two? Brat doesn't look old enough to graduate."

"That's-" Utakata presses one pale hand to his temple, brow twitching. "Yes. He is. He's probably compatible. That's not the problem. How is he _here_?"

On automatic, everyone turns to look at Roshi. He is the oldest of the Jinchuriki, and if there is precedence to this sort of scenario, he will be the one to most likely know.

Roshi shrugs. "No idea."

* * *

Naruto wakes up.

It's a slow, groggy process, initiated by a toddler body slowly rebooting itself back into the world of the living. Naruto feels more than sees the first bits of his surroundings: the press of something plush but textured underneath his cheek, digging imprints into skin. The fragrance of sharp, smoky jasmine incense swirling in the air, clouded with sweeter rose undertones. A warm weight is settled on his shoulders, and Naruto burrows deeper into it, curling tiny fists into what he recognizes to be a blanket.

Then the burn of evening sunlight hits, and Naruto squeezes his eyes tightly shut, trying to ease the smothering red dots.

"Naruto?" The Old Man's voice floats over. It's loud and close and tired-sounding. Naruto jolts a little, untangling his hands from the blanket to push a clump of blanket away from his line of vision, squinting blearily.

He blinks. Once. Twice. The swimming yellow starbursts from the sudden light influx clear away to wide, rectangle windows and a dark-stained desk, along with the Old Man's red and white hat peering at him over a stack of paperwork. His tongue feels thick for some reason. Heavy and swollen. His head is dizzy.

He wants to go back to the White Room.

"Ol' Man?" he manages, still squinting. The Hokage's face looms as it always has, craggy and spotted with wrinkles and stress lines. "What is it? Wanna sleep."

"You've been sleeping for a while now," the Old Man sighs. He gestures for Naruto to get up, and Naruto does, scowling but compliant as he shimmies into a sitting position. He'd been lying on a worn loveseat, he sees now. The kind that are stationed near the front foyer of the Tower, pristinely white with a few cushions thrown at one end.

Steam billows out from the teapot the Old Man has perched on a stack of documents. He pours one cup for himself, than another for Naruto, sliding the fine china across the desk.

Naruto scrubs at his eyes blearily. His blanket is pulled around him like a cloak, pooling in green folds at his waist. The tea blows knolls of steam into his face, and he makes an angry rodent face down at it, glancing up at the Hokage as he crosses his arms impertinently across his chest. "I dun like tea," he narrows his eyes at the offending object. By experience, the Hokage's teas boil down to green, black or rose, or sometimes just that strong, bitter tasting liquid called coffee. Naruto is under the consensus that all of them suck. "T's always bitter."

The Old Man's face loosens a little. His voice, when he speaks, is fond.

"You'll enjoy this one," he says."It's an imported brand. Besides, it'll wake you up a little."

Naruto stares at it with great suspicion.

But the Old Man's face is expectant, and he _is_ thirsty, the back of his throat parched and dry in a way that feels funny and unpleasant. So Naruto takes the cup between his hands, pursing his lips to blow on the hot liquid. The tea itself is orange in colour, tinged with a slight daffodil sheen. At the very least, it smells good and sweet, so maybe it isn't totally terrible.

He takes a tiny sip. It's hot, but not enough to scald. Going down, it eases the dryness at the back of his throat, tasting saccharine and akin to the tiny mandarin oranges the Old Man sometimes gets him in the summer.

"t's okay," Naruto concurs. Maybe not all teas are bad.

The Old Man's face softens. "I'm glad you like it."

In response, Naruto offers a non-committal noise. He lets the tea warm his hands as he glances around.

It'a a wide, open room. The walls are beige and old, littered with spiderweb fractures, the cieling high and painted a dark cherry red. Naruto squints at the sprawling village beyond the windowpanes, all golden, a clear strip of russet sky fading into lighter blues, the tiled roofs of houses and apartments awash with egg-yolk yellows come sunset.

That's... late. Earlier than Naruto expected, but then again, time in the White Room is an inconsistent phenomena. That's just how the White Room is.

"Hey Ol' man." Naruto peers up at him expectantly. "How'd I get here anyways?"

The Old Man's face does that thing where it scrunches up then flattens out, brow denting, mouth pressed thin, and he seems to actually sag a bit. He laces his fingers in front of him. Doesn't sigh, but takes his pipe from where it had been reclining against a stack of papers, blowing out a plume of curling jasmine smoke.

Naruto feels a sticky, worming feeling in his stomach. Something like guilt or worry or a bit of both. This is the Old Man's tired face, and Naruto doesn't like the Old Man's tired face. He wears it too often.

"Old Man?" He tries again.

The Old Man looks at him carefully. Naruto fidgets with the edge of his blanket.

"Do you remember," he begins slowly. "What happened before you woke up?"

Naruto blinks at him in confusion.

Of course he remembers. Why wouldn't he remember? There had been the White Room-except the old man isn't supposed to know about the White Room, right-and then, before that...

"Wait!" Naruto squawks, jerking upwards as if doused in cold water. "Wait wait wait. What happened to my rice balls Old Man?"

The Old Man regards him flatly.

"Your rice balls..." he sighs, fingers twitching upward to run at his temples. "I'll get you more later, Naruto. Do you remember what made you black out?"

A blink. A feather light frown. "My head felt hurt," Naruto says.

"Can you describe the feeling?"

The feeling: like waves grinding and crashing against a rocky shore. Like a gong being rung far too close to his ears, the sound-waves rattling him to the marrow of his bones.

"Dunno how to say it." Naruto purses his lips. "But it was really loud. Like, really really loud, ya know?"

"Loud," the Old Man repeats slowly, contemplating.

"Yep!"

"Do you know what caused it?" He asks, and Naruto knows from the sharp look in his eyes that the Old Man's on a roll now. That this is going to be one of those sessions where he shoots out questions about _everything_ , from what expressions the shop keepers were wearing (disdainful, politely ignoring) to how many hours of sleep Naruto had gotten the night before. Not that Naruto can ever answer most of his questions-Fuu and Gaara are always much more interesting than, well, the world outside the White Room, and Naruto, by nature and the huge energy resource implanted in his gut, is far too energetic to focus his attention on these things.

Besides, Naruto does, in fact, know what caused that aching hurt.

He's not supposed to _tell_ the Old Man though.

There are certain rules in the White Room. There are the rule _rules,_ which are more the manifestation of physics that govern that mindspace. Apart from that, there are social niceties, the man-made ones, created by the Jinchuriki. They are mostly unspoken. And, as told to him by Utakata, based on simple, common ninja-sense, which apparently neither Naruto nor Fuu nor Gaara have a single ounce of between all three of them, because _stop gathering in the White Room you're giving us a headache._

Which is kind of stupid. If they want Naruto to follow the rules, they should at least tell him what they are. Not that he's liable to actually follow them, but...

But there's one rule. And it's the biggest rule, the most leaden one, a constant hidden alongside the hushed whispers and short, distant discussions. Naruto doesn't remember who exactly told him outright (but he knows it. He always has, like a gut instinct or a worn, battered memory). He thinks it might have been Fuu, maybe Yugito. Matching the nagging of his gut, the queasy feeling of secrecy in his stomach, the voice had said, " _No. Not the Room. Do not tell anyone outside about the Room._ "

Probably Yugito, then.

He doesn't know why he can't. Just that no. He _can't._ He's not allowed, because than Bad Things will happen and even though Naruto's not exactly sure just what these Bad Things are he knows he won't like the outcome. He had wondered about it once, to Fuu, had asked "why not?" and let the words rebound. Fuu had tilted her head and donned her thinking face, pulling at the loose threads of her dress.

"I think they'll take us away," she had said, teeth chewing the bottom of her lip, brow dented down. "If they know. That we can do this. They'll take us away and lock it up and we won't be able to come here again."

That had been the worst thing Fuu had been able to think of. It's the worst thing Naruto can _currently_ think of. He can't imagine life without the voices in his head, the constant crackle of a radio trying to find one distant, dodgy channel, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. He can't imagine not being able to access the White Room, to not being able to hear Fuu's spring laugh and see Gaara's baby-duckling smile. That would be unreality. It would be Naruto in a village of poorly-hidden enmity and no reprieve, all alone.

So telling the Old Man about the stranger is out of the question. He already knows things, like Fuu and Gaara, whom Naruto had very exuberantly described once upon a time and then been praised for his excellent imagination. The Old Man calls them his "dream-friends." Which they are, kind of, even if they're not. Naruto doesn't correct him. The secrecy itches under his skin, burns hot in his gut, a pool of molten guilt because he shouldn't be lying to the Old Man, who is always nice at him, who doesn't look at him with those stone-eyes the rest of the village uses. Still, He can't lose the White Room. There's no way. Even on days when his mouth slips-up, cramming Fuu's glitter pranks or Gaara's soft comments into a winding lecture on the importance of Ramen flavouring, Naruto does his best to limit himself to those two only.

What he doesn't say:

How there are five others, apart from Fuu and Gaara, and now the wind-water stranger too, making nine total. How the pretty ink-picture in the Room is their landing pad. How the thoughts and the emotions filter through the link. How the White Room exists in the depths of his mind.

How there are monsters, sleeping under their skin, binding nine human sacrifice together with a force deeper than blood, older than chakra.

 _(How the fox rests amidst dripping water and sewer pipes. Its anger burns red, burns acid, how even buried so deep in slumber and oblivious to the world, that rage is still deep enough to make Naruto shudder.)_

So Naruto looks up at the old man, and that sinking, leaden feeling in his stomach crawls up his throat. Lying is wrong, he knows but the Room and its secrets are more important.

"I dunno" he says, keeping his gaze glued to the tea. Swirling orange like Fuu's eyes. Pale, delicate bone-china that seems translucent in the sunlight. Pretty flower designs.

The Old Man looks at him. His eyes are grey-brown, flint brown. They are edged by laugh lines and crows feet and dark skin baked a warm brown from Fire Country's sun. He knows, Naruto thinks, panicky, looking into the Old Man's eyes. The tea cools in his hands. _He knows he knows he knows._

But the Old Man doesn't push that topic. He goes back to questions: how Naruto felt when he woke up this morning. What he ate, before he went to the ramen shop with the Old Man. All the people he's talked to or seen in the past week, listed in order of appearance. What he was doing before the hurting started, what it sounded like. The Old Man does his best to wrestle all the tiny details from the past week and a half out into the open, Naruto answering his questions only a third of the time, because why would he remember what that Shop keeper was wearing?

He doesn't ask about what happened after Naruto fell and his vision blacked temporarily.

Which is good. Naruto doesn't think he could have answered him.

* * *

Hiruzen sips his tea, the remnants of it, dredged up from the bottom of his near-finished teapot. Personally, the flavour is far too sweet for his preference, sharp and foreign and not at all like the soothing, bitter concussions he usually favours.

It had been a gift though. Jiraiya is far too busy these days, managing his spy networks across the continent and still keeping a solid hundred kilometers between himself and Konoha, and consequentially the mantle of Hokage that Hiruzen's been attempting to pass on for the past few years. Occasionally though, he comes back. Never for more than a few days at a time, dropping off little gifts and bringing information too dangerous to be carried by pen and paper.

The last time had been two months ago. Naruto had gained a very cute frog wallet alongside an equally green frog plushie from the Hokage, and Hiruzen had been presented with tea.

Naruto.

Hiruzen glances at the stack of unfinished papers on his desk and sighs.

When the report had first appeared with one of Kakashi's ninken, Hiruzen's thoughts had automatically veered in the direction of the Kyuubi's seal. Perhaps a glitch had occurred. A malfunction. An outside interfering factor that had managed to get their hands on Konoha's Jinchuriki. It wasn't the only possible explanation, but it was certainly the worst-case scenario, and Hiruzen was whirling out the door, robes at his ankles, sealing countermeasures flitting through his head before the full warning had slipped from Pakkun's mouth.

Except it wasn't the Kyuubi. Or, at least not through what both Kakashi and Hiruzen could see. One moment, the boy had been happily munching through rice balls; the next he was a collapsed pile on the ground, hands fisted through his hair and screaming.

But Naruto's chakra had stayed clear all the way through. Pure and human, blue-stranded like Kushina's had been. There was no taint of malice, no choke of the toxidity that was the Kyuubi's trademark. Hiruzen's own careful check up on the seal had yeilded no cracks.

Moreover, Minato's boy, when he woke up, had been perfectly fine. He's coherent. He knew who he is. His chakra circulation is undisturbed. He had made faces at his tea and remembered his rice balls but also presented an utterly lacking attention span in concerns to everything else, much akin to Kushina in her youth. It is unmistakably Naruto: The Kyuubi is present, and tailed beasts cannot be forged. It cannot be anyone _but_ Naruto.

However, the boy had been hiding something.

It can be something trivial, Hiruzen knows. A terrible liar by nature (Uzumaki trait, he thinks fondly, all brash temper and war-banner hair and unwavering loyalties) and age, Naruto has a very distinct expression when he's edging away from a topic: gaze pointed down, mouth screwed in a half-pout, half frown, voice just a bit sharper than usual. He uses it when Hiruzen asks whether he drank the expired milk or not, (he did) and whether that particular restaurant owner had been unkind to him (the answer is yes, but Naruto always mutters something terse and half-hearted back, a mumble of "nu-uh" or "t's okay," or just a close-mouthed silence).

This time, Hiruzen had asked. "Do you know what caused it?" not out of hope for a whole answer, perhaps a clue. And Naruto had glanced into his tea and murmured in that terse, half-hearted tone, _"I dunno._ "

It can be anything. Perhaps Naruto had eaten expired wares for the twentieth time and just didn't want to admit it. His caretaker brings him food, but Naruto's appetite is a truly veracious thing. On days when he's hungry and the back of the fridge hasn't been cleared out, the boy tends to scrounge around until he finds leftovers, no matter its sickly state. Over the years, Hiruzen has resigned himself to the fact that most of Naruto's medical problems, from stomach aches to cramps to migraines, originate from downing something unsavory.

Or it can be something deeper. There are ANBU guards tailing Naruto around the clock, but they linger outside his apartment, in opposing rooftops. The village's defenses are still ragged from Kyuubi's attack three years ago. Although an unknown entity would be hard-pressed to make it through the walls, the fact that they could have-and far more easily than prior that October night-is an unfortunate reality.

Leaning back into his seat, Hiruzen curls his fingers around his pipe. Security would have to be increased. Naruto is too young and the Kyuubi too great of a deterrent for Inoich to attempt a mind-walk, but calling in Jiraiya for a keener, second eye on the seal is an imperative.

Locating a piece of clean paper and a pen, Hiruzen tips his pipe to the corner of the desk, and begins to write.

* * *

...

* * *

Thank you so much to: _ **LazyHaru, Weirdowaquill, eniox27, NoxDal, mytwistedview, Jarik, Kyuubi16, BlackShadow1, draven32, ZrPx, SanDemonMax, Kani, roy23, riszang, Yagura's Sensei, ch405-5p34r, Kurokawa Kazunari, einargs, KilluaGodspeed, Guest, Pyra-the-pyro and dragonloverpower**_ for reviewing! You guys are awesome.

 **Endnotes:** So. Chapter two is up! I'm going to be polishing up the plot a bit, amidst other things, and the next update is probably going to take a little longer because of that. On the other hand I'm also in search of a beta for this story. The word count is going to rise, my grammar catching abilities are... not. If you're interested drop me a PM or a review! XD

Tell me what you liked, tell me what you didn't. Also if there are any spelling or grammar issues I've overlooked. Feedback is always appreciated! :)


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